Two years and counting : first commercial ever done with Enwaii

Thanks to Fred Hopp and Eight VFX, we are happy to be able to show the first commercial ever done with Enwaii.

This commercial required the 3D reconstruction of three interiors to swap from one to the other by rotating them.

During summer 2010, Banzai Pipeline Ltd engineers came to SIGGRAPH 2010 to present a beta version of Enwaii. After seeing a demo, VFX supervisor Fred Hopp was convinced Enwaii would change the way they worked at Eight VFX. So he waited for the final release of Enwaii to test the software.

In february 2011, the release of version 1.0 of Enwaii was a perfect timing for Eight VFX artists who needed to reconstruct three interiors for a commercial : an office, an office at home and a living room. They decided to purchase a licence of Enwaii to deal with it. Considering the numerous commercials they created using Enwaii after this one, like Twix Ideologies, Carls Jr Robot, Mercedes Surfaces, Call of Duty Rezurrection trailer, ... it seems obvious this first use convinced EightVFX artists Enwaii was a useful tool for their pipeline.

For the anecdote, the two final pages of the documentation were not yet written when Fred Hopp wanted to start to use Enwaii. So he started with all but two pages explaining the texturing process in Enwaii. Because the texturing is the last part of the reconstruction, Enwaii developers thought they would have several days to write these pages before Fred Hopp would learn the software and reach this part. But the day after, Fred Hopp asked for the missing part of the documentation. So the end of the documentation had to be written quicker than expected. But this was good news to witness that, with one single licence of Enwaii, in a few hours time, Fred Hopp was able to learn the software, convert and undistort the photos, calibrate the photos and model the interior.

The living room

CG model of the living room.

Photos of the living room set.

Full frame and wide lens make interior capture quicker and easier (photos taken with a Canon 5D Mk II and Sigma lens 12-24mm).